Jar of Earth
by AzureShadowMoon
Summary: The very first time he saw Catherine, he wasn't expecting a corpse.


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The very first time he saw Catherine, he wasn't expecting a corpse.

The robot had been with him since damn near the beginning of this hell, and had pushed him forward whenever he felt himself lost in the madness of the WAU. But then the ARK came into light, he learned about scans, and Brandon, and Catherine.

The silence in the room was defining.

She was watching, how could she not? She was always keeping track of him whenever she was in the system. Always talking and analyzing and sometimes cracking dark humor to lighten the mood. But it was quiet.

"Catherine?" His voice felt like a scream in the emptiness. "It's you. You had an accident."

There was a single moment of tension before the feminine automated voice came through the speakers.

"What are you-?"

A horrifying pause. A realization. Simon feels himself cringing despite the only Catherine him seeing is a dead one.

"Oh." Her voice is quieter now, subdued, "You mean . . . _Catherine._ "

For a moment, Simon contemplates his body 100 years ago, gone with the comet far above, rotting in the ashes of billions. He thinks of the Simon he killed a few hours ago, the Simon who thought nothing of scans and how they worked. He thinks of himself, a dead body in an air tight suit, and strangely wishes he could cry.

"Don't worry." Catherine is good at reading the atmosphere sometimes. "It's better this way."

He can't say anything to that. Maybe she had hoped living Catherine was dead, so she wouldn't have to go through what he did. Maybe she believed living Catherine would just be a hindrance. Maybe she just didn't want to think about it, like him. Leave it all behind.

He walked out of the room, his suit leaving echoing footfalls down the corridor. It's silent again, but this time it is filled with hollowness. It's the type of feeling one would have at a funeral.

"How did she die?"

He almost didn't expect her to ask, but said, "You got into a fight with your colleagues. They didn't want to risk launching the ARK. Thought it might not make it through the atmosphere."

And wasn't that something. Didn't they do the math at all? Didn't they believe Catherine had it figured out? Did they not see the WAU growing on places and people? They got caught up in being left behind. They didn't want the ARK to leave without them. They ended up killing each other over it, or the WAU finished them off.

Sometimes he's glad he's a robot.

"They killed me?" She breathes, and for a moment he's almost convinced she's on the brink of tears.

"I'm sure it was an accident." He tries calmly. "They were just trying to stop you from launching."

He lets her stew over this as he fixes the powering. A silent Catherine is worrisome, but he knows she's too stubborn and mule-headed to get down too far. But he listened anyway.

She spoke again, sounding bewildered, "How could they kill me?"

He stops, because for a moment he imagines his friends from 100 years ago killing him. Bashing his skull in and calling it an accident. Sympathy wells in him and he sighs.

"Catherine . . ." He calls but she breaks through, almost desperately.

"I know I'm not an easy person to like," Her voice is weak, "I just thought they trusted me."

"C'mon, don't do this to yourself." He says, before gathering the ARK in his arms and moving his way through the facility. She is quiet again and he almost thinks she's had enough.

But then she asks, "Did you have friends in Toronto, Simon? Real friends?"

He thinks back. It's hard to, with all these present memories messing with his skull and sometimes he just wants to believe he's a robot and never was Simon. Sometimes he desperately clings to Simon because that's all he has left. Now, he felt like living Simon was a distant dream.

"There were some." He admits. "Jesse, Sean, Kevin . . ."

"I always wanted a friend." Her voice is wistful and stops him in his tracks. "Like a real one. Someone you'd never hold back with."

It slips through his mouth before he stops it, "I'll be your friend."

Catherine goes quiet and he has the intense urge to slam his helmet onto a wall. While thoughtful, he doubted that sounded as good as it did in his head, even for a moment.

"Oh, pity friendship." Catherine groans and if he had a mouth he'd have smiled. "Now I feel even worse."

He loads the ARK and heads back to Catherine's station. The filed picture of her face on the screen greets him, and hears a 'good job' from the speakers.

"If we burn, we burn." She says. "If we live . . ."

She trails off and Simon asks, "What's the first human thing you're going to do on the ARK?"

"Um." He imagines her blinking in confusion. "Watch the clouds roll by, I guess?"

"Clouds?" He echoes.

"Yeah. Clouds. It sounds nice."

He thinks about it. The sun, a body with skin and blood that's actually his, no WAU or underground water station. He thinks about Earth in a jar, because that's what Catherine has done, and imagines lounging in the grass, thinking of planets they must be rolling by. He thinks of all the people dead here that are on the ARK. He'll get to apologize to Brandon and Robin, to whap Johann up the head and any other that chased him all the way down to this hell hole. They'd be friends.

"Yeah." He agrees as he watches the ARK slide to the launch station. "Yeah, that sounds nice."

"We can even watch them together." She chimes in, and it almost sounds mocking.

He shakes his head and says, "Let's get on the ARK first."

"One step at a time." She agreed.

. . .

Later, in the dark reaches of the ocean, a lone robot sits strapped in a chair, and weeps.


End file.
